Tech News, Tips and Others

Friday, December 20, 2013

A ray of hope for BlackBerry OS7 users. Yes, a new Blackberry phone based on the old Blackberry platform 9720!

Many may question why the manufacturer doesn't merge the platforms to a single one instead of concentrating on two versions of the same operating system simultaneously at the same point of time! As big a puzzle as that well may be for the manufacturer, lets welcome the all-new sub 15000 Blackberry, which merges touchscreen and QWERTY on to the same device.

Built like the older Curve models, the 9720 looks good. Available in black and white, the device sports a decent-looking touch screen coupled with a backlit physical keyboard. The back has a rubberised panel with a shiny Blackberry logo in the middle. Sturdy, yes, but it does look a bit childish and doesn't carry the premium corporate looks of the Blackberry legacy.

The 2.8in IPS touchscreen display has a resolution of 480x360 with 214 PPI, not bad for a sub 15K device. Apart from the call, menu, trackpad, return and call disconnect buttons which sit between the touchscreen and the physical QWERTY keyboard, there are other buttons for easy access.

The 3.5mm audio out and power on/off switch sits on the top while the micro USB charger input and direct to BBM button sit on the left. The volume, mute and camera convenience keys occupy the right.

The device features a 5 megapixel rear camera with an LED flash on the top. Surprisingly, the 9720 doesn't have a front camera.

Inside, the 9720 has a 806MHz Tavor MG1 processor along with 512 MB of RAM. The combination works fine for day to day usage, but is slow for heavy tasks. The screen offers a wide viewing angle, coupled with decent touch response. We didn't find any issues using the trackpad. The keys are a bit rais ed but comfortable.

The 5 megapixel camera doesn't have autofocus. In normal light, the images are decent and usable. The latest app also lets you upload to social networking sites. The 1450 mAh battery remains alive till you reach home from office. With heavy usage, it dries up a couple of hours earlier. The phone has WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS but lacks NFC.

wedThe 9720 is not a bad phone and is in fact good for old BB users. But Blackberry does need to sort out a couple of things. Like providing a slightly bigger battery so that the phone lasts at least for a day!

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Sony Xperia Z1 is a power-packed smartphone in a waterproof housing. The full HD smartphone has several impressive features. Even though it does resemble its predecessor, the Xperia Z, it's elegant looks maintain Sony's reputation of stylish designs.

The glass-coated casing is stunningly impressive, it is highly prone to fingerprints and smudges. Sony has used a single piece of aluminium for the casing, giving a premium yet sturdy finish.

The microSD slot and micro USB port sit on the top left side. The micro SIM slot, power button and volume rocker occupy the left side of the body. All the ports — except 3.5mm sound out — are hidden under similar coloured rubber caps to ensure that the phone actually stay water proof.

Measuring 144x74x8.5mm, the device is quite compact but the angular design makes it a bit difficult to hold and use single handed. On the plus side, the device is IP58 certified ensuring that the Z1 is dust and water resistant . Though the glass back looks a bit flimsy, it survived quite a few drops during our test.

Undoubtedly, the biggest USP is its full HD screen. Boasting a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, the Z1's screen is great to watch movies or play games. In our display test we found the colours, viewing angle, banding and saturation to be impressively perfect.

Inside, the phone boasts of a powerhouse Quad Core Snapdragon MSM8974 2.2GHz processor along with 2GB of RAM. It also has an Adreno 330 GPU doinf graphic duties.
While testing the phone we opened multiple tabs in chrome, multitasked through several data intensive social networking sites and played a few heavy duty games like Asphalt. And in every test we found the device very responsive, without any noticeable lag.

In the benchmarking session, the Xperia Z1 performed like a monster. It scored 33799 in Antutu and 1148 in Vellamo Metal. The only other phone that bettered its score — that too with just a few points — is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

The 20.7 megapixel camera performed well, irrespective of lighting conditions. The handset also has a 2 megapixel front camera for video calling. Plus, Sony has released a clip on lens for more impressive results. We will review that soon.

The Z1's battery is impressive — 3000mAh, this lasts almost two days on a full charge.

The Sony Xperia Z1 is the best phone till date from the manufacturer. Available for a little less than Rs 43,000, the Z1 is a bit expensive, but the overall performance is super.

HTC has recently unveiled the Desire 600, a mid-end Android dual SIM smartphone.
The appearance is premium and our test unit came clad in black. Measuring just 67x134.8x9.26 mm, and weighing just 130gm, the Desire 600 is a good fit in the hand, matte finish on the back adds to the anti-slip feel.

The 4.5in qHD screen shares the front with two touch sensitive buttons and two grilled speaker bars, this is similar to the manufacturer's previous flagship devices. Touted as a "boom box", these speaker units are placed on top and bottom of the screen.

The device packs in a Snadragon 200 based SOC, Qualcomm MSM8625Q Cortex A5, a Quad Core processor with a clock speed of 1.2GHz. In addition, the Desire 600 has 1GB Ram and 8GB inbuilt memory with an Adreno 203 based GPU. The device also has an external micro SD card slot, the memory can be expanded up to 64GB.

The phone has 8 megapixel and 1.3 megapixel rear and front cameras. Both cameras boast of a back illuminated sensor and 2.0 f-stop, ensuring quality performance in low lighting conditions. The rear camera is also capable of recording full HD videos at a 720x1280 resolution.

Android Jellybean 4.1.2 is overlaid with the Sense 5.0 user interface. Most features of this interface remaoin the same as in the earlier HTC one devices except a few tweaks — like the dual SIM management. The
superLCD 4.5in screen has a 960x540 pixel resolution. The quality is decent with neutral colours and ample brightness, the viewing angle is pretty decent too. With a 240 PPI density, the screen falls short of the latest high end smartphones, but it is functional for standard use.Rounding up the configuration is the 1860mAh battery, which lasts for a day on a full charge.

The Desire 600 is a decent looking Android handset with good performance. The only flaw is its price — Rs 26,999 on web at the time of this review — which is just Rs 2,000 less than what the super impressive Nexus 5 costs! If HTC considers this and cuts down the price by a few thousands, this device will surely be a decent buy.

The Portronics Drums speaker is a cylindrically shaped device measuring 78x76.6mm (HxW). It has two 2.5w drivers situated on the top and the base. Both drivers are encased by a perforated metal grill and a rubbery ring on the bottom. Wrapping both the drivers together is a casing of Silvery Gold Zinc alloy giving a rugged feel.

The speaker also has a micro SD card reader, 3.5mm audio out and a mini USB port for charging. Instead of touch controls, Portronics has opted for physical controls — a sensible idea, given that touch controls don't respond most of the time. Housed on the top of the device, the control panel has rubberised switches for play/ pause, forward, backward, volume up and down.

There are three modes: Aux, Card reader and Bluetooth. Operating and pairing the device is easy, long press the play/ pause button, the device is switched on and an audible female voice announces the active state. To pair it with any bluetooth device, keep the button pressed for two seconds, till a blue LED starts blinking with audio instructions.

Once connected, you'll be surprised by the volume and quality that this miniscule speaker is capable of, good enough for a medium sized room. At maximum volume there is a pinch of audible distortion with less bass. But it improves a lot after 50 hours of usage.

Overall, the sound quality is acceptable. We also tested the call receive feature and found it decent. We watched a full two and half hour length film by connecting this to a laptop. The battery lasted for three and half hour of music in Bluetooth mode.

In a nutshell, the Portronics Drums is good value for its price — a little less than Rs 3,300.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

One look at the Vivobook F202E and we were smitten! The compact size, light weight, fit and finish and decent price make it a product, hard to beat.

Instead of using plastic, ASUS has used brushed aluminium for the lid and the palm rest, which gives a premium look and feel. Weighing just under 1.4Kg, the Vivobook F202E feels almost a kilo lighter than other conventional laptops. Measuring 303x200x21.7mm, it can also easily fit inside any regular backpack or sling bag.

Importantly, ASUS hasn't sacrificed any ports to keep it compact. The left side has an Ethernet Port, HDMI, Kensington lock along with a couple of USB ports, of which one is a USB3. More ports like D-Sub, card reader and another USB port sit on the right.

This vivobook has laptop level specifications in a netbook sized body. Instead of a 14in or 15.6in display commonly seen in regular laptops, ASUS pairs a 11.6in touchscreen with Windows 8. Inside is an Intel Core i3 3217U processor with 4GB of RAM along with 500GB of storage.

The 11.6in screen has a resolution of 1366x768, more commonly seen in 14in or 15.6in laptops. But the shrunken screen boasts more PPI (Pixels Per Inch) — 135 compared in comparison

VERDICT: Light, great looking, good in any thing except hard core gaming

The software can be purchased online and is even available at stores. We downloaded the package from the Developer's corporate website. The 244MB installer file takes around half an hour or less through a stable internet connection.

The installation process was simple. To avoid conflict, the installer first checks if there is any other security suite pre-installed. After that, the installation was a matter of a few clicks. The interface is almost similar to the stand alone Anti Virus version. The teal white combination interface states the current physical state of the computer in a large black font. Below that, an array of buttons represents different features of the suite. The entire suite operates through a single window, so consumes less space.

Our test comprised several activities including, some real world notorious threats to the computer!

The first of them was anti malware test where we popped in a DVD full of latest malwares into the system.
We also installed a few of them in our system even before installing the suite. We found the suite very effective as 87 percent were detected at one go.

The next test was phishing where we tried to visit some highly fraudulent sites including some new ones and yet again the suite stood tall.

In our anti spamming test, we found that KIS analyzes both IMAP and POP3 incoming messages and marks spam by scanning their subject line. On the first run, it detected several promotion-based incoming mails as spams — appreciable!

We tried breaching the firewall, and after every attempt we got an access denied message from the suite! We also tried to use penetration tools and most of the time were blocked.

The parental control are much simpler than earlier. By listing all users, it allows you to block particular sites and monitor your child's activities . The suite also offers utilities like Privacy Cleaner, Windows Troubleshooting, Vulnerability Scan, to name a few.

In a nutshell, Kaspersky Internet Security 14 is a simple to use Internet Security Suite with decent protection and most importantly, consumes less system memory. Available at an MRP of Rs 899 and Rs 1,799 for one and three users respectively, it is expected to be available for much less, online.

Though the Canon ImageFormula P-215 isn't the lightest or smallest portable scanners out there, it does have a lot to offer. A duplex scanner, dedicated card scanner, 20 sheet Document Feeder tray and more importantly, the ability to be stashed in a bag, make it an attractive choice.

Measuring 285x95x40mm (WxDxH), it weighs a kilo. The scanner does not require a PSU unit, hence there is no need to cart anything else around. Encased in all-black plastic with a silver border on the bezel, P-215 is a good looking device. It has a USB port for connectivity along with a regular port for charging and a Kensington lock.

Installing the scanner is an easy process, though the main installer only installs CaptureOnTouch including necessary drivers. To make use of all available functions, you need to install other utilities manually.
The P-215 can scan different sized documents from 2x2.in to 8.4x14in, at a speed of 15 pages per minute. The 20-sheet document feeder is handy while scanning multiple jobs. The P-215 took just 39 seconds to scan a sheaf of 15 pages at 150DPI resolution in mono. The same set took around 59 seconds when we scanned the same pages in colour. At 300DPI, the scanning took almost a minute and a half and 600DPI took even.

Happily, it supports duplex scanning, which means you'll be able to scan both sides of a paper in a single scan. Duplexing comes very handy while scanning volumes of data simultaneously.

As per our test results, we are quite happy with the speed across modes, with decent output quality. We recommend this product to users who value quality and need to scan documents very frequently.